UND Physics Day:

Thursday, November 12, 2015

UND Physics Day is an annual outreach/recruitment event hosted by the Department of Physics & Astrophysics.  It is intended as a fun, inspiring, and educational field trip for high school juniors and seniors from ND and MN, to promote their interest in physics.  It is an excellent chance for students to experience the joy of doing science as they explore the world of physics, to interact with faculty at North Dakota’s flagship university, and to see how undergraduate students can become involved in research.  Physics Day activities include hands-on demonstrations and presentations featuring exciting developments and achievements in understanding the world around us.   Free pizza and refreshments are provided.  In addition, a drawing will be made for one set of Celestron 7x35 binoculars that will be presented to a lucky teacher.  

UND Physics Day 2015 will be held on Thursday, Nov 12, 2015 (the day after Veterans Day).  We have not finalized the schedule (the event is 8 months away!) but a typical schedule is as follows:

8:30 am                       Students and teachers arrive at Registration

9:00 am-9:30am            Opening remarks

9:30 am-12:30 pm          Demos & Labs (7 groups of 30 students, 25 minutes each at 7 stations):

                  - Dark Matter and Dark Energy

                  - Planetarium

                  - Making Waves (strings, Chladni plates, Rubens flame tube)

                  - Amazing Electricity (Tesla coil, Van de Graaff)

                  - Magnetism and Superconductivity (maglev train)

                  - The Flying Screwdriver and other physics demos

                  - Tour of the Department

12:30 pm-1:30 pm    Lunch, Prize Draw, and Presentations

                  - Frozen Fury Rocket Team

                  - The Martens Observatory

                  - Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

                  - New Materials for New Devices

Lunch, parking, and activities are free of charge to teachers and students.  The teachers have to arrange for transportation to Grand Forks.   (I have not looked into whether there are agencies in ND or MN that are willing to fund transportation for schools with limited budgets.  I would be very interested if you have information about that.)  We typically send out invitations to schools in a 3-hour radius around UND.  Last year we had about 200 students.